


The Streets Seem Empty

by cristianoronaldo



Category: Football RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-21 03:27:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3675660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cristianoronaldo/pseuds/cristianoronaldo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steven and Alex are going through a difficult time in their marriage, so they take a vacation to a quiet village in Spain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Streets Seem Empty

**Author's Note:**

> this is for Diana. I still hate Xabi Alonso. 
> 
> ultimately historically inaccurate. I’ve never been to Spain, so I cannot possibly accurately describe a made-up and somewhat impossible village there. i also can’t properly explain bullfighting because it’s not something i really support, but it’s something i wanted to write about in an attempt to better understand. The descriptions of bulls/the fighting/the deaths, etc., are probably all, again, inaccurate. Also, equally important-- I don’t include accents on some words that need accents because the way my computer does it leaves a space between the accent and the letter, and I’m aware that I have a way to fix this, but I don’t, so consider this a spelling error and slap me on the hand for it.
> 
> *ALSO THIS IS IMPORTANT: the fucking italics didn't stay, so i'm mad about that. if you see stuff that should be in italics, I KNOW THIS and I HAD IT that WAY unTIL this wouldn"T Copy over like thAt oh ym god i'm so mad about this but not mad enough to go back and fix it all bc this is 20 fucking pages long goodbye

****

He was choking on dust by the time they arrived. They were traveling in an open jeep from the outer limits of the nearest city to the infernal place they were to call home for the next two weeks. His wife was quiet, glancing around at the dust-covered sights, looking down at her shoes, and then staring at her husband with wide, imploring eyes-- not asking for him to like it, not asking for his permission, simply asking whether he was willing to give it a chance. There was a promise or a threat in her eyes; he couldn’t decide which it was, and that was half the problem.

Staring at her, he had this image of a man on his knees. Dark curls spilling over squinted eyes, a throaty laugh-- musical in his mind, like a bell, like an alarm, like something warning him of the pain this pleasure was to bring. He blinked, and the image was gone, and he wanted to pinch himself or worse. What was wrong with him, that he could look at his wife and imagine the ones he betrayed her for?

They passed a church. White. People were milling around outside, speaking slowly. There was a rhythm to their language that made him squirm in his seat. He wanted to look at his wife and tell her that this place filled him with despair. It was quiet, it was thoughtful. It smelled of dust and compassion, and he just wanted to return to England, to the city, to the place they called home and to their children, but he remembered her grabbing his hand and saying, This ends or we end. And what the fuck was he supposed to say to that? Give up his daughters for his filthy secrets?

The man driving them stopped, turned around. He gestured with his hand and spoke something quickly to Alex. Then, in broken but sturdy English for Steven’s sake: “You will stay here, yes? Small village, safe at night. Quiet, you know? Church in the mornings. You are welcome. Use car if you need. I will leave here for extra each night.”

Alex responded beautifully. Everything she did was so painstakingly beautiful. She flipped her hair over her shoulder without meaning to. Her eyes narrowed. Her shoulders were narrow, arms slim. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and say, I will never leave you. I will never ever leave you. But just as he was imagining it, he was already stepping away.

He left the car, thanked the driver, picked up the suitcases and started toward the small house they were renting. It was brown like the rest of the village, the color of dirt and ruin. Only the church stood gleaming, white-washed and protected from the ever-flowing current of dust, the one bit of light in the otherwise bleak place.

“What do you think?”

He shut the door behind them. The inside was simple. A dark green chair in the corner, a fireplace though there was no chance of them needing it in the middle of the blazing hot summer. There was a bed beyond the central living area, a table near the kitchen complete with wooden table settings.

“It’s nice,” he said.

“Okay,” she replied, and she swung her hair over her shoulder again as she rolled her suitcase away from him. She dumped it on the bed and began to unpack. There was a wooden dresser beside the bed, and she filled it, layer by layer, methodically and critically in a way only Alex could.

Then, finally, she turned back around and stared at him, long and hard. “But we said no more lies.”

Immediately, the back of his throat burned. He felt like he was catching fire. “Fine. It’s dark. It’s depressing. I feel like I can hardly think here. It’s so goddamn depressing.”

She remained there, just staring at him until he no longer felt he had the right to speak, to complain. He looked away. It was only until he found the courage to find her eyes again that she spoke: “Not half as depressing as watching your husband fuck his way through half of Liverpool.”

“At least it was only half,” he spat brutally.

“Another three fucking days and it would have been the whole damn city. Too bad they don’t have a clinic out here. With all the sleeping around you’ve been doing...” Everything was sharp. In that moment, she could have sprouted claws and fangs and he would still have been more in awe of the way her eyes lit up, the way her fists clenched, the way her voice shook with power.

“Yeah, well. Who fucking picked the place.” He threw his suitcase down. “I’m going to bed.”

“I’m going to dinner.”

“Then go.”

They were very good at apologizing and very bad at meaning it. This is how it always went. They fought, and they made up, but they never really made up. They didn’t forgive or forget. They just carried on, pretending everything was alright, but the scars were still there beneath it all. There was still the betrayal and the misunderstandings, and something clogging up their insides-- some darkness that prevented any curious light from entering.

But they were very good at apologizing, so when Alex came home, Steven had flowers ready and she had brought him something to eat. They carried on with their evening routine. She washed her face with the soap that smelled like lilacs, her hair with the shampoo that smelled like vanilla and oranges, and he wanted to bury his face in her. Some days he wanted to pull her apart and fall into her in ways that weren’t humanly possible. He wanted to kiss the skin away, look at her barest bits, and say This is what has been happening. This is what went wrong. He wanted to look at their mistakes as if they were just bits of fucked up machinery instead of sentient beings who hurt each other for the sake of-- or perhaps, kinder, despite-- hurting each other.

“I’m sorry,” he told her.

And she half-turned around, her back gleaming under the dim lights, and said, “For what?”

“Fucking half of Liverpool.”

“It’s alright,” she said, but it wasn’t alright, and they knew it wasn’t alright. He knew and she knew; they knew together, and they knew independently of each other. There was a complete and unique understanding of the fact that this was not alright, but they were very good at apologizing and very bad at meaning it, so she was allowed to pretend.

They slept in the same bed that night, his hand resting gently on the curve of her hip until she pulled away and wrapped herself in the blankets. When she thought he was sleeping, she cried very quietly into her pillow, back shaking, tears rolling. That kind of crying where she was trying so hard to stay quiet that her desperate tremors shook her insides like an earthquake shakes a building. She choked into her pillow, and he said nothing.

He thought nothing except This is what it is to break a heart. This is what it feels like. And then, briefly, It feels good.

And then he thought of his daughters with their sweet, innocent eyes. The way they looked at him as if he had never done anything wrong in the world. The way they still thought of him as Daddy, not Steven, not Traitor, not Bastard. He was just Daddy. He brought home snacks and treats and vintage football jerseys for them to try on and admire. He made them his princesses, but he did not make Alex his queen. He could not find himself on the map of their future.

And then he thought, This doesn’t feel so good after all.

+

The next morning Alex was already awake and moving when he opened his eyes. Sunlight was streaming in through the window. She had thrown the thin curtains open wide.

“Did you have to fucking open those?”

“It’s late, Steven.”

“It’s vacation, Alex.”

She ignored him and continued to watch her reflection. Her hair was up. She had on a loose black dress, a simple gold chain necklace, soft sandals that made no noise when she moved. He could see the bones in her cheeks, jutting out like little blades, and he wanted to fall against them, smash his lips to one side of them and say, Do you know how very sorry I am? Do you know what I would do for you?

“I’m going,” she said over her shoulder. “Stay in bed and rot for all I care. I’m exploring the city.”

He put his arm over his face and snorted into the crease. “Sorry, the city? How many people do you think live here? One thousand, including the mosquitos?”

She ignored him. She was very good at ignoring him. “I think it’s best if we limit our time together.” Which really meant I want to fucking kill you, but I don’t know how to say it or accomplish this task, so stay away from me before I figure it out.

“Fine,” he said. “I don’t care. I really don’t care.”

She slammed the door on her way out, and he felt like shit for making her feel that way, but there was a tiny blossoming of victory in his chest because he had won the argument, and he was winning the marriage because she was the one burying her head in her arms and sobbing until her bones rattled, and wasn’t this winning? Isn’t that what winning was supposed to feel like? Taking someone’s heart in two hands and whispering I Love You right before ripping it into tiny pieces. Laughing. Some form of laughter had to be involved, even if it was just a triumphant little smirk. That’s just what you do after you cause someone pain. No apologies, no matter how good you are at faking them.

He dressed quietly and triumphantly and smirked his way to the door. He left, locked the door behind him. The place was so goddamn depressing. There was dust everywhere and the place was silent. Only ghosts were shuffling by, old ladies with fruit baskets under their arms and old men who looked like they were about to work on their small yards only they were too old to work on their yards, so they would just stand there and sweat and pretend they were doing real work, but really their best years were behind them and-- the whole thing was so goddamn depressing. Time hadn’t touched the village-- it was ancient, the most ancient thing he’d ever seen-- but it had certainly touched the people. And he didn’t want to wither. He didn’t want to watch other people wither-- not because he cared about them but because it made him question immortality. It made him believe that there truly was an end, no matter how many times he shouted at Alex or wished for her to disappear, no matter how much he loved Alex, no matter how much he loved his daughters-- he was going to wrinkle and wither under the sun like the rest of them, and one day he would be standing outside his house, pretending to be working on his yard. Looking like he was doing yard work, but really he was too old and too useless to function. And this was a fear. This was a real, real fear.

He stopped at a fruit stand. It was, unsurprisingly, dusty. The fruit looked as hot as he felt. He reached out hesitatingly, and the woman behind the wooden stand nodded her head. She rambled on about something in Spanish until the blankness in his eyes became obvious to her. She must have heard about the Englishmen coming to visit because she quickly switched to English, said, “Go ahead” and gestured to the fruit.

He felt a plum. It was leathery, soft, probably juicy on the inside. He pulled his hand back with the peculiar feeling that he should thank her profusely, shake her hand, something. Maybe shed a tear or two. It was such a random, useless gesture, but in that moment, with her leathery, ancient skin and her old eyes, he felt like he should be grateful, like touching that goddamn piece of fruit was a miracle and a half.

Instead of thanking her, he said, “Where is everyone? The streets seem empty.”

She said, “It’s the morning.” Then, she grinned. “Church.”

So he went to that building with a feeling of dread in his stomach, thinking that he hadn’t stepped into a church since his wedding when he was absolutely forced to, and back then, it was a good thing to connect himself to such a beautiful woman and, back then, stepping into a church wasn’t a big deal because he didn’t feel like he had so much blood on his hands. And the worst thing about stepping into the church now wasn’t the way the white-washed building burned his eyes under the sun or the way he felt like an outsider. It was the guilt that seeped into his bones, the guilt that felt like it would never leave.

He stayed in the back until the service was over and everyone filed slowly out, and then he was staring at a lone figure kneeling in front of the cross. He didn’t want to interrupt anyone’s prayer, and he hadn’t seen Alex in the flood that left the building, so really he had no business being there and he wanted to leave immediately, but the man stood up and turned around and Steven took a step back.

He said something in Spanish that didn’t register, and even though it was something basic and simple and Steven probably could have stumbled his way through a greeting in the foreign tongue, he just shook his head slowly, and the man switched to English.

“Hello,” he said. “You were standing in the back.”

“I was… what?”

“The back.” He pointed. “I noticed you there. You didn’t want to come and sit down.”

“I didn’t understand what was being said, so it didn’t really make a difference.”

He looked at Steven. He had a very even, logical face. It made sense, the way he was created. Hair cut neatly, beard trimmed neatly, eyes perfectly spaced, jaw perfect shape. His nose was slightly too large for his face, but it was charming and decent, and it made him look trustworthy. Steven, therefore, instantly assumed he was a snake.

“Faith,” he said quietly, “is not written in one tongue.”

“Great.”

“And neither is forgiveness.”

Steven bounced on his heels. “Good to… Good to know?”

The man smiled gently. “What I mean is that you are welcome to both.”

Steven’s eyes narrowed. “And what makes you think I need either of those? Faith, forgiveness… ?”

“Small village. No real reason to exist. People don’t come here for its beauty. They come here to run away.”

It was a surreal experience. People don’t just walk around talking like that. He was out of his goddamn mind, standing there in front of that man nailed to a wooden thing, talking about faith, talking about forgiveness. As if they had anything to do with each other. As if they had anything to do with Steven. As if they had anything to do with reality.

“What am I running from then?”

“That’s your business.”

He stepped forward again, and Steven felt like stepping back, but the steady look in his eyes was enough to assure Steven that everything was alright, that one day he would be standing uselessly about in his yard, but maybe he would think about this day and feel like clipping a rose of its thorns.

“I’m Xabi,” he said. “And I’m not from here either.”

“Faith. Forgiveness. You running from something, foreigner?”

“No, stranger. My run is finished.”

Steven glared at him for a moment. He was very strange and very interesting. He stood calmly, not as if he was confronting something with serenity, but as if he truly had no business to pry, as if his calm was something from within for something within.

“You a priest or something, Xabi?” Before the other man could answer, Steven said his name, rudely and loudly, his way of introduction. He shoved his hand in front of Xabi’s body, and they shook hands.

“No,” he said. He smiled. “Steven.” As if he was trying out the name.

And it wasn’t as if Steven looked at him and fell in love or immediately wanted to wreck himself against rocks for this man. It wasn’t like that. It was more-- he looked at Xabi and saw what he feared to see, and what that was, he didn’t quite know, but he felt like he was standing within something and remaining without, looking down at his hands from above. He was no longer himself, and he was no longer in control of his future, his actions-- but of course this wasn’t true, and it was only his way of saying if I mess up again, it’s not my fault. I am one of those sailors, lost at sea, enchanted by the voice of the Siren.

“Then what are you?”

“A man of faith.”

“I see,” he said, thinking of Alex suddenly and without warning. “I don’t think I’m one of those.”

Xabi looked at him for a very long time, and there was a lot in that gaze that Steven didn’t know what to make of. It was as if someone was looking at him as a blank slate for the first time in his life. His daughters looked at him with a love they were already told they needed to have, a trust they assumed was well-placed. Alex looked at him like he was killing her, and he knew that he was. He didn’t deserve to be looked at like a blank slate, but he was. He felt blank, empty, but not as if he could sin again without dirtying himself. That was the trouble with sinning. It made everything feel so goddamn good and bad at the same time. It made his mind dirty and cramped, but his senses were blessed with some kind of brief paradise.

“What are you?” he asked finally.

“Can I just ask,” Steven said, whirling around to examine the Church. White-washed on the inside, brighter than anything he’d seen in the past twenty-four hours. Even the color of the fruit at the stand was muted in comparison. “What the fuck kind of town is this where people just go around asking people questions like that? Do you know how normal people work?”

“We aren’t polluted with sound,” he said with a shrug. His features were fine, perfect. He looked like something plucked out of a painting and prepared just for the reality of meeting Steven, tempting him. He was dangling on a string in front of Steven’s eyes saying taste me, touch me, but don’t betray her. If you want me, pray instead.

“What does noise pollution have to do with anything?”

Xabi laughed then, and it echoed off the walls. It was a short, simple laugh, and it ended just after it began. “You don’t understand me.”

“No. I don’t. But apparently I don’t understand a lot of people. Or things. Just flailing around lately.”

“Is this how normal people talk then?”

“No, I’m just talking. I’m not trying to be normal.”

That was the moment. He looked at the white walls of the church, and it wasn’t like he had a religious experience or anything like that, but he looked at the walls, and he looked at his hands, and he looked at the man standing across from him, and he felt the weight of his choices settling into his lungs, slithering between his ribs, wrapping its evil body around his heart and squeezing until he was staring at the walls again, his hands, looking at his life in reverse and realizing the backwardness of his desires.

  
Finally Xabi moved beside him, tucked his hands neatly into his pockets and said, “I’d like to show you around. You don’t like it here, I can tell, but no one escapes this place unchanged.”

“What do you do, fucking brainwash people?”

“Yes.” He smiled briefly. “Are you staying in the hotel?”

“The hotel? You have one?”

“We don’t need more than one. Are you staying there?”

“No, we’re in the house at the end of this-- dust,” he finished lamely.

“Ah, I know where you are now.” He made a funny sound at the back of his throat like he had finished committing this to memory, and Steven was instantly pulled back into true reality, the one in which Alex was his wife, the one in which he didn’t just speak to strangers with an open mind or an open anything, the one in which he was a traitor.

He looked at the cross and hated.

+

The first thing they did was look at the bulls. A young man was standing just inside the ring, training one or examining one. Whatever he was doing, the bull was restless and beautiful, powerful. It would be dead soon.

“It’s barbaric,” he said.

“What is? To kill?”

“To kill something so beautiful. If you have so much respect for the thing, why not treat it with some dignity.”

Xabi propped himself up on the fence delicately, placing his feet on the bar beneath. “I’m no torero,” he said, after a moment. “But I think we have a different idea of dignity.”

“It’s to let it live.”

He paused. “Don’t think I support this. But no. Dignity is not to live.”

They didn’t speak for a long time after that because the heat was settling in against Steven’s skin. He was sweating, and the flies were buzzing around his head. He felt like something dead in the sand, flies buzzing, waiting to feast. He was just an upright corpse, and the thought was terrifying, jolted him into action. He was gripped with the sudden desire to do, to use his limbs for bad or for good. He didn’t care which. He just wanted to stop standing around, watching that fatal thing fly around the ring with no idea of the things to come.

“Why did you take me here?”

“We’ve been raising bulls since the dawn of time,” he said, watching it like it was the dawn of time. “It’s a wild thing.”

“Yes, but why did you take me here? To watch a wild thing grow? To watch it die?”

Xabi didn’t answer. He coughed into his fist and watched the bull pace the ring. “Do you know why they prod it and tease it before the fight actually begins?”

“Because it’s cruel.”

“What a simple world you live in, Steven.” He was amused. “We’re cruel to things because we want to be. How simple.” He waited until Steven was clenching his jaw, annoyed and tenser than before with the feeling that he was misunderstanding even the misunderstanding. He was standing outside of the ring, on the foreign side of things-- a fatal thing with no idea of the things to come.

“Then why do they do it? For fun?”

“To show the audience its strength.”

“How beautiful,” he snapped. “How absolutely gray your world is, where cruelty is beautiful and beauty is something to destroy.”

He watched the man with the bull. He stepped away, let himself out of the large roaming area and stood beside Xabi and Steven, examining it from afar with his arms crossed. He was from Madrid, Xabi explained quietly, and he was here to purchase the bull, but to be allowed into the fight, it had to be in peak condition. Only a physically perfect bull would be allowed in.

“So he’s a vet,” Steven said, watching him. He was strong, imposing, and his eyes narrowed as if he was killing the bull in his mind. Touching its coat with his firm hands, whispering an apology, brutally shoving a curved sword between its ribs, into its heart.

“No,” Xabi said quietly. His voice was reverent. “He’s a matador.”

It was a very sad thing to see. The man was in mourning for an event that had not yet occurred. How horrible it must have been to look at a wild thing and understand that you were to kill it. His shoulders were bent, his eyes were staring down at the dust floating gently to cover his shoes entirely. He was a statue in the wind, hands curving gracefully to rest on the fence. He watched the bull roam, with fear, with respect, completely in awe.

“He loves it,” Steven said.

“Yes.”

“He kills it.”

Again, sadly, “Yes.”

+

Steven was sitting at the table when Alex returned. There was horrible service, so he was just poking aimlessly at his phone, pretending he cared to contact someone when really he had no one he cared about at all, except perhaps Alex and the girls, but the girls weren’t expecting a call anyway; they knew about the poor service. He didn’t need to hear their voices. He wanted to hear the way every word was a song, how they musically sang their greeting back. How innocent and bright their worlds were. Everything was in color. Nothing had faded.

“I took the jeep into the city today,” Alex announced. She hated him. She hated him so fucking much. He could see it in her eyes that she wanted him to suffer, but she didn’t want to make him suffer. She wanted him to feel pain and be sorry, but even when he felt pain, he wasn’t truly sorry. He just wasn’t that kind of man, a good one. He wasn’t a good man.

“Great,” he said. Her hair was down now, flowing down her back. Her skin looked brighter, tanner, more full of light somehow. She was so, so beautiful. He wanted to break something, to throw something against the wall. He wanted to tell himself Want her. I know you have it in you to want her.

“I spoke to the girls. They had a phone there. You wouldn’t believe the way things were arranged. They had this store, like we’re in a different goddamn century, and they had a phone in the corner, and I asked to use it.”

“Alex,” he sighed, instantly annoyed that she had spoken to the girls without him, annoyed that she was speaking, annoyed that she was beautiful. He hated her. “You talk about this place like it’s antiquated. Do you realize how offensive it is?”

“I’m not being offensive,” she snapped. “And don’t talk down to me like I’m some kind of idiot. Time hasn’t touched this place. That’s all I’m saying. Even the nearest city--” She cut off and blushed. “It feels like time is going backwards.”

He rolled his eyes. Felt everything she was feeling. “Time doesn’t go that way.”

He expected her to lash out again, but then her features softened and her eyes went very sad, and she said, “No, Steven. It doesn’t.”

He hated the way she said his name, like they were at the end of something, like they had finished one of the girls’ storybooks, and they were tugging on the last page, trying to turn it to read the next one, but that was it. That was just it. They were at the end of the road, and they couldn’t produce another page or another path, not even if they wanted to.

He broke the silence. “How are the girls?”

“They’re good. They miss us. They miss you reading to them. They told me to say they love you.”

Something went dry in his throat. “I miss them too.” Then, “Please, Alex. I don’t care what I have to do. Whatever is fucked up between us-- I can’t lose them.”

“You think I would do that to you?”

“Yes,” he said honestly. “Yes, I do.”

She turned to the mirror to wipe her face clean of makeup. He looked away. It was an intimate gesture, and he no longer felt privy to these moments.

“That’s it,” she said, and he wasn’t sure what she meant, and he didn’t ask. But she went to bed after that, and everything felt very final.

+

In the morning, she was up before him again. She acted as though nothing very terrible had happened the night before, but he felt like dying. She asked about the previous day. “What did you do? I came back here before I left for the city, and you were already gone.”

“Went exploring,” he said vaguely. “Church. It’s… bright.”

“Yes,” she said, and she stood there.

“I met someone there, and he offered to show me around.”

Her face darkened. “Yeah,” she said, and her voice was so twisted he could have sworn she transformed into some violent beast. “How was he?”

“Fuck off, Alex.” He picked a banana up off the counter and peeled it. “I didn’t do anything with him. And if you think I’m lying, fuck you. I’m not doing this for you. I’m not doing any of this for you. I’m doing this for the girls. If it wasn’t for them--”

“I know,” she said, and her voice was thick with pain. “You would be long gone if it weren’t for the girls. But you don’t get to win this one because so would I.”

“I didn’t fucking do anything. We went to see the bulls.”

“Fine,” she said, and she left. She was wearing a flowing blue dress with tan heels. Her makeup was light. There was a hat in her hand to guard her from the sun. She was the most beautiful thing in the world. She was the most terrible thing he could imagine.

He met Xabi after that. He was waiting outside when Steven left for the day.

“I met Alex,” he said. “She’s lovely.”

“She’s a fucking menace,” he said honestly.

Xabi looked him over. Steven looked away. The jeep was gone. “You talk about your wife that way?”

“She’s not my wife,” he said.

“But she said.” His brow furrowed. “I thought--”

“She is,” he said. “But we’re not anything.”

“But she’s your wife,” Xabi said carefully.

The day was heavy. There was the lightest breeze-- strong enough to pick up the dust, still too weak to do anything to counteract the sun. He squinted against the burning light, held his hand up and surveyed the village practically in ruins around him. The church was still bright above it all, even the dust seemed to shy away from it.

He changed the subject. He didn’t want to talk about Alex or church, somehow the two were intricately tied. “Are we going to see the bulls again?”

“Yes, if you’d like.”

“Is the matador still here?”

“Yes.”

“Is he allowed to see them before he fights them?”

Xabi smiled at his interest. They continued to walk. “He’s not fighting these. He was injured recently. He’s working for his father until he’s fully recovered. And then he’ll return.”

“What does his father do?”

“He’s a very good breeder.”

“How do you breed very well? Don’t you just put two and two together?”

“Mature bulls can be up to 700 kg,” he said. They stopped as a car rolled slowly by. He ground his foot into the dust. “Do you think you can get that by just putting two and two together?”

“No,” he said, feeling stupid. “I assume you get that by feeding it.”

He looked at him, amused again. “Shall I repeat what I said yesterday about simplicity?”

Steven rolled his eyes. “My world is simple, I know.”

There the matador was again in front of the fence, one foot planted firmly on the lower panel, both hands on the upper one. He leaned forward intently, fully focused on the way the animal gleamed, sweating beneath the sun. It kicked up dust as it roamed. It made this sound that Steven could not even begin to describe. It was fiercer than a horse, more like a lion than anything he had heard before, but more graceful, more proud. It tossed its head. It was arrogant, coated with the dust the wind was throwing around yet still glowing, still beautiful.

“How did he get injured?”

“He lost his nerve,” Xabi said, leaning very close now so the matador would not hear. Steven could feel his breath against his neck, and he instantly flashed back to the last boy, when he was fucking his way through Liverpool. The filthy youth was wriggling against a wall in his mind, splayed there like some indecent spider.

“Lost his…?”

Xabi watched him, glancing down at his lips cautiously. “His nerve,” he repeated. “I saw him many times. He was born here, remained here until they moved to Madrid, and his father works at the outskirts of the city, raising bulls. Breeding them. Sending them, as you would say, to their deaths.”

“So now he returns to, what? Buy bulls for his father?”

“Yes, his father uses these grounds sometimes. And he returns, like a ghost. A shadow of his former self.”

“What, a shadow of himself before the injury?”

“Yes, before the injury.”

“How did it happen? I mean, exactly. What exactly happened?”

Xabi looked away. His eyes returned to the bull, panting and furious. “You want the gory details? People think they want the gory details until they get them. This one was special--”

“The bull.”

“The matador. The third tercio is a dance-- was a dance, until he was staring at the bull. He never lost his nerve. Never until this time. But that’s how it always is. Nothing terrible happens until something terrible happens. He lost his nerve, and he was gored in the femeral artery.”

They watched the man watching the bull, his shoulders tense. He was as beautiful as the animal, mournful and unsatisfied. He seemed to favor one leg, pacing carefully, balancing against the fence uneasily. He was graceful and unbalanced, a seemingly impossible combination of symmetrical and irregular.

“Gored,” Steven repeated.

“Yes. He was bleeding out in the arena, but he stood. Impossible, but it was adrenaline that forced him to his feet.”

He turned away from the man, imagined him lying in the dust, the bits of sand mingling with his blood. His insides spilling out. A furious bull standing over him. It seemed like justice somehow. Like the thing had a right to stamp and gore for the terrible sadness of the deed that was bound to occur.

“And then what? What happened to the bull?”

“The matador, unsteady as he was, missed the heart. There was no clean kill. He punctured a lung. Blood spilled out of its mouth. It drowned.”

He felt a great weight on his heart for the creature, like some unimaginable pain existed in the world, and he was only now beginning to tap into it. Despite his own circumstances and the pain he was currently putting himself and others through, he felt this strongly. And, feeling strongly, he was unable to separate himself from this sadness.

“And you still think there is some part of this that is okay?”

“I pass no judgement on it,” he replied. He kept his eyes on the man, a lonely figure, bent over the fence now with his eyes narrowed. Steven imagined that he was thinking about his injury, the brief moment of peace before the impact, the wound opening up, the way blood spilled down his body. The unimaginable pain. He liked to think about that, and he hated to think about it at the same time. Xabi had been wrong. He wanted the gory details until he heard the gory details and then he wanted them badly.

“How do you stand there and have no opinion?”

“I have an opinion,” Xabi said firmly. “I said I pass no judgement. It’s different.”

“Don’t see how,” the other man muttered, but he left it alone.

They walked to the other end of the fenced area. The bull was pacing in the middle, running aimlessly and then slowing. It was large, and he was free until death. Then it stood perfectly still, facing the matador, and the matador stood up straight, still favoring one leg. And that terrible sadness that Steven had felt earlier entered his eyes, and he looked at the creature like he wanted to die in its place, but instead he would brandish his sword and slide it cleanly through a heart.

“He loves it,” Steven said, repeating his words from earlier.

And Xabi, echoing that conversation, said, “Yes. And he kills it. You see how things are not so simple?”

And he was thinking about the wild thing behind the fence and the wild thing he loved and hated. All he did was cage her and kill her, loving her intensely, dispassionately, regretfully. He was hit with a longing for a better kind of love between a better man and a woman not so hurt. It killed him to see a matador love a bull better than he loved his wife.

They walked up an incline until they could see the neighboring village. They were standing in the long grass weighed down by the dust, moving slowly in the wind. A fly was crawling along Xabi’s arm, and he swiped at it gracefully.

“Where did you grow up?”

“In the Basque country.”

“You’re Basque?”

Xabi smiled gently. “Everyone here can tell. They all have a strong aversion to final syllables.”

“You don’t sound different,” Steven said thoughtfully. “Really, I’ve listened. It’s all gibberish to me.”

Xabi smiled for that.

"Why did you leave then? You said you ran. You must have been running from something."

"From something, yes. And to something. But as I said before, my flight has finished."

"Just because it's finished doesn't mean you don't have some explaining to do." He raised his eyebrows. "Isn't that what this is, a friendship type thing?"

"Fine," he said, as if parting with his secrets was not sweet sorrow. "Honesty, then."

"Funny," Steven said. "That's what Alex asks for. Is it horrible if I am honest with you while I lie to my wife?"

"Yes. May I ask why you two seem to..." He drifted off.

"You can ask, and I can try and answer, but nothing will come close to explaining it." He took a breath, watched the way the grass rode the wind and the way the matador bowed his head. "I love my daughters. I love them more than anything. If there is an ounce of goodness in me, I owe it to them."

"And this is why you two stay together?"

"Yes."

"What pulled you apart in the first place?"

"I cheated. Multiple times. With several people. It was a constant agony. And that's why we're here."

"To get away?"

"No. To run. To fix. I don't know anymore."

The matador lifted his head. He was handsomest thing Steven had seen since that bright-eyed, black-haired beauty with the bouncing curls and the tongue that spoke in riddles. He was tall, strong, noble and sad. Because, Steven was beginning to realize, with this brand of nobility came death and sadness like a plague after it.

"One time I asked him," Xabi said, looking too now, "If it made him happy when he won, and he said yes, of course it made him happy. And then I asked if killing it, if killing the bull made him happy, and he looked at me with the saddest eyes I've ever seen."

Dust crawled up his pant leg. "And what did he say?"

"He didn't say anything to me. He doesn't say much to anyone. Nothing beyond the necessary."

"Isn't that somewhat necessary?"

Xabi shrugged. "He intrigues me. I spend my free time at the church or here with the bulls, taking care of them when the owners are busy. Now that he's back, we work side by side in silence."

"Did the injury change him?"

"It's silenced him further. He limps to ease the pain."

As if he had heard-- though this was impossible; they were too far away-- the matador looked up, appraised them with his misery-ridden eyes and turned away, clapping a dark hat on the top of his head.

Steven looked back to the neighboring village beneath the hill. It was just as dark, just as desert-like in appearance, and there was a touch more beauty. Still, he wouldn't have given his side for anything in that moment. It's funny how temporary a moment is when you really think about it.

"Can I see the stables? Do you work in there sometimes?"

Xabi smiled. "With the horses, yes, sometimes. The natural enemy of the bull. Swift, beautiful, proud--"

"Though no sport ends with their death," Steven cut in critically. "Because that would be disgraceful."

Xabi raised his eyebrows for a moment, and though no fire blazed in his eyes, there was a small flicker, a loss of patience. "That is truly interesting, Steven, especially coming from someone who talks to his wife the way that you do. Disgrace in killing a bull? Yes, perhaps. But disgrace in betraying your family as well."

"And you think I don't know that?"

"No, I think you know it. I just don't think you feel it." Steven glared, and Xabi continued, “Sorry. I don’t think you feel sorry.”

He felt like fighting it, and then he lost his strength, his nerve. “Maybe you’re right,” he said instead, and they began to walk back to the other side of the fence.

The matador was propped up on an old tree trunk outside the barn. There was an instrument in his hands, and he was singing in a lovely, sad voice in a language Steven couldn’t understand. There was some great feeling that escaped the music, despite the language barrier, and he and Xabi stood still, listening to him complete his mournful hymn. His voice was beautiful, too beautiful even for the wind to carry, and so the voice remained for the three of them in the dust, in the long grass beyond it.

The sun was beating down on him, but he paid it no mind. His voice was lovelier than the bull galloping proudly, lovelier than the little dark village beneath theirs, lovelier even than the perfect way Xabi’s face was lined up just before he smiled. It wasn’t precise or exact but rather fleeting, weighing on certain notes and then jumping lightly away, building in volume and then becoming quiet again. It was sorrowful; there was a longing and a heartache, and his fingers moved over the strings of the instrument as if they could undo the stitches that kept the sadness within him.

Steven wanted to turn to him and say What is so painful that you cannot just say it? What haunts you that turns you into a ghost? But he said nothing. He simply watched and listened, and if he'd had a heart, it would have broken in that moment for the way the music ached.

When they finally left, the song still had not ended, and the matador still had not acknowledged their presence. He began his song long before they walked over, and he would continue long after they had gone. He kept his face over his instrument, hat shading his beautiful features.

"What was that," Steven said. It wasn't a question, just an exclamation of praise.

"Music," Xabi said hollowly. "The kind that can scrape out your insides."

After a long time they passed the church, and the white wasn't so bright. The streets were still nearly silent, but old couples ambled by with their baskets of fruit, and a group of young girls and boys ran by, shrieking beneath the sun. It was a startling contrast to the deathlike trance the music had put them both under.

"You never said why you ran," Steven finally said. "Why you left home."

Xabi smiled briefly. "I left my home for." He hesitated. "For work. I moved to Madrid. I was happy there until I fell in love."

"You fell in love?"

"It makes fools of us all," he said self-deprecatingly. "And that is what I ran from."

Xabi left after that. Steven didn't know where he was going, but he had his own life, and his own responsibilities that came with it. So he wandered aimlessly, thinking that the sun-soaked village was really not so horrible after all, if you kept the dust out of your eyes. Every few steps, he would think about his life there, how peaceful it would be if he just decided to stay, but then he thought about his girls, and there was a darkness in his soul. He wanted to be with them, would give anything to be with them, but he would not bring them to that dusty place. It was a place for silence and for sadness, a place to understand and to be understood, a place for the kind of music that brought men to their knees. It was not a place for the people he loved most in the world.

+

He and Alex joined one another for dinner, and she brought up divorce. She looked beautiful again, more striking than soft loveliness. Sometimes he wanted to move forward and touch her features and tell her that she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, but now there were numerous beautiful things in his life-- past lovers and now this place-- and he could no longer speak these words without lying. She really was beautiful, so beautiful it made him angry, but he did not love her-- not even when he told himself that he did, not even when he was desperate for her to look at him. He didn't love her even when he loved her.

"I've been considering it, and I know you have too. I just want to give us both a happy ending, and I think this is the only way to do it."

He scoffed at that idea, and he would never remember the exact words he used, but he told her something like Fuck Happy Endings and what's a happy ending anyway? Privately, he thought it might be living alone, living here, never having to see her perfect face again. But in the same breath, he was choking down his fears and demanding that he see his daughters, and this part he said aloud. She couldn't keep them from him because they were the only things in the world he really wanted.

But that's the heartbreaking thing: they weren't. He loved his daughters better than he loved anything else in his life, but they weren't the only things that he wanted, and he was human enough to let other desires seep in.

Finally she lashed out as he knew she would and told him violently to shut the fuck up about happy endings because she would force them to occur.

She shut her eyes tightly for a moment and then spat out the question he'd been waiting for, "Why did you do it? To me. I understand that you never meant to hurt the girls. I know you love them. I’m not asking why you did this to our family anymore. I’m asking why you did this to me."

But he didn’t have an answer, so he just looked at her, and shook his head slowly. “I wish we could go back,” was all he said.

She looked at him, and he knew that she felt the same way, but something dimmed in her eyes, and she shrugged on her sweater. Turned away. “We still have a week here.”

He put his head in his hands. “That’s not what I mean.”

+

Alex had been sleeping when he left, her face relaxing into that of an angel’s with just the lack of consciousness, and it made him a little sorry in that moment, to know what she would be without the pain. But he had known that version of Alex too, and he had loved her, but he hadn’t truly loved her, and it was such a difficult thing to explain. There used to be this feeling in his chest, like his emotion for her was too large to fit, like it was bursting his very physical body. But just emotion wasn’t love and isn’t love, and most importantly, it wasn’t enough.

He told Xabi about their conversation on their way to the bulls, speaking slowly and deliberately and with his whole heart for once. Mornings did that to him. Evenings depressed him, late night made him deeply regretful, and mornings filled his mind with all the hope and wonder and hurt he kept at bay any other time of day. The morning seemed to carry the words away from him, lightening his burden in ways he never deserved.

“Do you think it would make you happy?”

They passed the church, and he shut his eyes briefly. They kept moving. “Don’t you think some people are undeserving of happiness?”

Xabi thought about it for a moment. “Yes. Truly awful people. But I don’t think you’re a truly awful person.”

He didn’t smile. “Why is that?”

They kept walking, and at first Xabi didn’t answer. He stopped at a fruit stand along the way, spoke in slow, lingering Spanish with the woman sorting them into different wooden boxes. It was a glorious display that morning. Even with the dust blowing over everything, the colors were bright and unusual, and Steven remembered reaching forward, days ago, to touch the leathery skin of a plum.

Xabi left with a small bag of fruit, and that was how they spent their day, resting outside the barn with a bag of cherries, oranges, and almonds. Sometimes Xabi would set the bag down, disappear into the barn, and Steven would lean closer to the door to hear him speak to the horses. Sometimes the matador would walk in and out of the barn too, but he never spoke. He seemed to linger, as Xabi said, like a ghost who had no choice but to remain. He didn’t seem to know where else to go, but Steven didn’t blame him because neither did they. They could have explored the whole village, but the only place he felt truly at peace was staring at a creature fated to die.

Finally, halfway through the day and after numerous conversations, Xabi turned to Steven and said, “Because you let me know you. That’s why I don’t think you’re a terrible person. I don’t think you’re a good person, but I don’t think you’re a terrible one either.” He paused, and the matador appeared at the edge of the barn. “And I quite like you,” Xabi added quickly, eyes searching the ground, the sky, finding the matador, and then fixing on the bull.

Steven stared. He wouldn’t look away. He wanted to do horrible things. He wanted to trace Xabi’s jaw with his finger, and then his lips, and then his tongue, and he wanted to move until their bodies were lined up, until the other man was gasping for air at his neck, begging for some relief. All at once he was that man again, that man who would betray his wife and hate his wife and think nothing of his family. Xabi was a temptation; he was a lesson.

He looked away. “Have they decided on the bull?”

“Yes.” Xabi nodded to the matador. His instrument was hanging from one hand, the tip of it just ghosting the ground. “His father will buy this one. He’ll be transported to somewhere just outside Madrid for their vet to examine, and then he will go to Malaga. And the feria de agosto will mean his death.”

“Wonderful,” Steven said, sickened. “God, it would be better to just set him free. What if we just opened the fence and set him free?”

“You can’t do that.”

“I know. God. It would be mercy if he died now. If something just fell on him from above. Maybe your God will take mercy and make it happen before that goddamn festival.”

Xabi looked him over critically. “Because that is dignity, is it? That’s mercy?”

“Better than the poor thing drowning in his own blood.”

Xabi offered him the bag, and their hands met, and it wasn’t anything like electricity, but Steven didn’t want to pull away immediately, so he didn’t. He just let their hands rest there for a moment, and Xabi didn’t move either, but his eyes became very sad just then, and Steven had the feeling he was holding back harsh words, words that made him very sad to hold inside, but he would bear that pain so that no one else had to. That was the price of holding things inside.

“The end is swift,” he said, and it felt like a reassurance. Xabi moved his hand away gently. “After the spectacle, the end is.” He paused there. “A dance.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Yes,” Xabi answered, and he made no exceptions or apologies for it. “I’m pulling a Hemingway. I’m not telling you if it’s right or wrong. I’m just saying, here are the facts, Steven. It’s not all awful. It’s not all good. There are parts of this-- hell, there are parts of life that make me want to end it, and there are parts of it that make me want to see it through. The tercio de muerte is a dance.”

+

They decided on divorce. By the time Steven returned, she seemed lighter somehow, much happier. There was a cold resignation in her eyes, but she seemed comforted by how solid her resolve was. She told him clearly, but her voice didn’t rise. She didn’t scream. She didn’t curse. She didn’t ask for his permission. She merely looked at him and said, “Steven, we’re getting a divorce, and we’re leaving in two days.”

He didn’t know how to react, so he just stared at her silently for a moment, opening his mouth and then closing it. Then, “But I don’t want to leave,” childishly, as if someone was taking away his favorite toy.

“I know.” Her eyes were so beautiful he never wanted to look in them again. Then, in a softer voice, she said, “I thought we could go to that festival in Malaga before we left. I read about it, you know.” Her voice was stronger now, as if she felt like she had something to prove, and Steven felt guilt coating his lungs. “It’s nine days and ten nights, and it’s going to be just starting. If we spend two more days here, take a train, we can make it in time to see at least something.”

So that is what Steven told Xabi, that they were leaving in two days and they were going to witness something that was going to change them. Xabi said I’ll miss you, and then he said, I wish you didn’t have to go, and Steven heard those words like he was in a dream, and if he had left the village the same way he had entered it, he would have looked at Xabi and kissed him, and he would have fucked him like he fucked that black-haired man with the visible blue veins running up and down his pale arms.

Instead he put a hand on Xabi’s shoulder and said, “You’ll find a way to have better service in this place, and you’ll call me.”

“Yes,” Xabi answered, even though it hadn’t been a question.

Before their time was through, they walked back to where the bull had been kept, but it was gone now. Bulls were roaming on the other side of the fence in a field belonging to the next village over. Men were on horseback above them. The sun was glaring down at them all, blasting some kind of warning.

They looked at the empty space that had once held the bull, and Steven looked down at his hands, ashamed. “How will I know if I watch him die?”

“You won’t. They’ll all look the same to you."

The enormity of the words set in, and he wanted to scrub his hands clean. He wanted to childishly stamp his foot and refuse to go.

"Do you know that I don't want to leave?" It seemed important to get this message across. He was desperate about it. His intentions were almost pure.

"I know." Xabi smiled, and he looked like he wanted to lean forward and do something, act on what was between them, but he didn't. It wasn't overwhelming or earth shattering, but it was the first relationship in a long time that, to Steven, felt like it was worth something, and he was very sorry to give it up.

They didn't have one of those final moments that, perhaps, they were entitled to. There was no long kiss in front of a sunset, no sex in the long grass, no fond memory of the dust rising to form a shield around them both.

There was just a look between them, and the remainder of the time they had together. Xabi showed Steven the work he did with the horses. He knew the stable hands very well, almost seemed to instruct them. After the stables, they wandered around the village, and then Xabi showed off his house, a tiny thing not far from the church. He had a crucifix nailed to the wall in every room, and Steven looked away uncomfortably. He understood why Xabi had not taken him there before.

The final day was a blur. They ate dinner together, speaking quietly and then not at all. Steven brought him back where he and Alex were staying, and she greeted them both with warm eyes, even shaking Xabi’s hand. She spoke rapidly about what she had learned about Spain so far through her reading, through speaking to the locals, through simply wandering around in an attempt to absorb, and Steven realized what he had not realized in a long, long time: that she was much more than a pretty face. She was sharp, bold, intelligent, and she could fight back better than he could fight forward.

Alex went to bed, and he and Xabi went around for one last walk. They went back to the barns, back to the empty area, and Steven shook his head regretfully. “I wish this wasn’t it.”

“You’ll see your daughters soon.”

“Yes.” He smiled. “It’s funny. Alex and I were arguing about happy endings the other day. Funny how her idea of a happy ending is a divorce, leaving here. And my idea of one is to completely restructure reality until it’s--” He cut off, formed a loose fist with his hand and then released it. “Until it’s perfect. And maybe that’s why I don’t believe in happy endings.”

They said goodbye with promises to speak again soon.

+

It was a hot day when they saw the bulls die. Steven was restless, and the crowd was restless but they wanted blood and he wanted silence. He kept getting up, in search of water, in search of a bathroom, just to walk around, and he could tell Alex was starting to get annoyed because she was quite enjoying herself, but he didn’t really mind. He didn’t even have the energy to fight her on it when she shot him a glare and whispered for him to sit down.

He watched them test the strength of the bull, and he saw that it was strong. He caught a glimpse of the matador behind the fence as he got up for the fourth time. All decked out in a beautiful costume. He looked noble and strong, but he didn’t have the matador’s look; there was no sadness there, no limp, no unspeakable pain, no understanding of what he was about to do. There was only focus. And maybe it was better that way. Or if not better, easier.

He returned to his seat when they were stabbing the bull with colorful sticks. Xabi had explained the whole thing to him before-- they were trying to correct the course of the bull, something like that, but it just seemed heartless, and he wanted to close his eyes when he saw its back shining red with blood. They stabbed again. He winced.

He got up a fifth time, and the rest of the row was annoyed by him now, but they were too invested in the action to really do anything. Plus, they could tell he was a foreigner. Alex could blend in with her near-perfect Spanish and her good looks, but he stuck out like a sore thumb. He couldn’t even stumble his way through a sentence in Spanish let alone sit through a bullfight and pretend to be entertained.

He sat down again when he thought he could handle it, but he couldn’t handle it, and he longed for the way the dust swirled up his pant leg and the way Xabi told him things honestly, without pretension, without condescension, without sugarcoating anything. He just told him the honest-to-God truth, and so that was what Steven gave him in return. A dance, he’d said, but the dance was starting, and Steven wanted to shut his eyes again because the bull was bloody and the crowd was cheering. Everything around him was so loud, and the matador was there in front of everyone, and he was beautiful. The way that he walked, the way that he stood, the way that he swept his arm and his red cloth from side to side. There was an art to it. There was beauty to it. But that didn’t make it any less brutal or any less unsettling.

And then the matador moved forward and plunged his sword in the bull’s heart, and Steven thought back to the matador at their village. His hat tipped forward to hide his features, his limp, his polite manner of movement, his lovely voice. He could have made death a dance. Someone else moved forward with a sharp point, bent down to end the bull’s life quickly, and then it was all over, and everyone was cheering. They were jumping out of their seats and cheering, and Steven thought, what a wild, fatal thing.

****  
  


**Author's Note:**

> as usual, let me know your favorite quotes, favorite parts, thoughts, criticism, etc. sorry this is so fucking long. 
> 
> one of these days, i'm going to write something unrealistically happy and then you'll see why i hate happy endings so much. until that day, trust me. 
> 
> *******helpless update coming soon


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